The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (6 page)

“Two days,” Khan answers heavily, “before he stopped
screaming and trying to bash his own skull open. After that, he
just stared at us.”

Akinaga’s people set up a camouflaged tent, and defer
to Straker to put the body on an old folding table. The Katar
science team put on breathing masks and goggles that they probably
haven’t needed for much of their lives, and the gloves from light
surface suits. And so armored, they begin their autopsy, with
Straker and her Companion close by, just in case.

They quickly confirm what Straker was able to scan
using her modifications, but also make other discoveries, more
mundane but perhaps critical.

“Signs of malnutrition, dehydration and decomposition
are all recent. The man was otherwise developmentally healthy and
reasonably well fed, but maintained the physiology of an early
colonial: Squat and thick-boned, lungs stunted by supplements and
pressurized spaces.” Akinaga sounds clearly disdainful of those
that haven’t strived to adapt their bodies. “Wind and sun burns on
his face show he was wearing a mask and goggles like you, but none
were found on him when he was taken. Also, his sidearm holster was
empty. The wound in his temple is consistent with a self-inflicted
pistol shot. Unfortunately, it missed the device in his brain.”

He shows us the opened skull. The machine is only
half the size of a man’s fist, sitting under the brain. The bullet
that ended his conscious suffering would have passed over it. The
brain itself

“The brain itself is decayed, traumatized by the
bullet, but a significant amount of medial tissue is missing, as if
consumed, as are parts of the skull and spine. It looks as if
something has been eating him on a very small scale, like the way a
Butterfly larva nibbles at leaf-matter.”

The smell at this point is blinding. I’m grateful for
the breeze blowing through the tent to partially clear it. But it
doesn’t just smell like corpse-rot. Something’s been done to the
brain tissue.

“The nanotechnology that made this thing needed
resources to build itself,” Straker assumes. Akinaga nods.

Straker looks sick. I expect she’s wondering if her
own resource-scavenging technology does this to a defeated enemy.
It looks like someone’s been inside this man’s head with a
micro-drill and a very small spoon. I feel a shiver just thinking
what he must have suffered before putting his own gun to his
head.

Without asking permission, Straker reaches in and
partially pulls the device from the skull, snapping it from the
spine. I see the stalks of the sensors spearing forward through the
eye sockets.

“It isn’t nanotech,” Straker confirms. “But it was
built by nanotech. Just like the bots.” She pries and twists until
the thing comes fully free. The last parts to be pulled from the
body are a cluster of what look like fine wires that were running
down the spine, and the tube-like injector that runs into the
mouth. She examines it for a moment, then pinches her fingers into
the thick base shaft of the injector, snapping a piece out. It
reminds me of an ammo magazine, only gelatinous and very small.

“More seeds,” she identifies. “I can feel them.”

“I thought you fried this thing?” Murphy needs to
know.

“I thought so, too. This module seems to give the
seeds some protection.”

“Can they be stopped after they enter a body?” Khan
wants to know.

“Each seed is a set of pre-programmed nanobuilders
that scatter through the bloodstream after injection, then gather
at the brainstem. Stopping one probably won’t stop the process.
You’d need to find and kill all of them. The current required to
fry them would be lethal to the host.”

“How many are there in one…?” Murphy doesn’t know the
proper word, so he just points to the tiny deadly thing in
Straker’s fingers.

“That depends…” She turns it in her hand, looking
from different angles, her eyes glowing green. “They reproduce in
this module. It takes time, but there are already six more here.”
She looks at Akinaga. “I take it you don’t have any kind of
nano-containment technology?”

Akinaga shakes his head.

“
Shit
…” Straker hisses. The “magazine” has
broken open, the contents oozing out—no,
crawling
out. She
draws her Blade, stabs the tip into the cluster of seeds. They
flare, burn and disintegrate.

Akinaga and his science team have stepped as far back
away from her as they can and still be in the tent.

“It’s okay,” she tries to reassure. “The tech is a
lot more primitive than mine. Not even at the level of what the ETE
have. That makes me immune.”

But we’re not. And her Blade didn’t kill these things
on the first try. If she hadn’t been here when Akinaga and his team
performed their autopsy…

“How long could one of these things keep moving—keep
infecting—before its body failed?” I ask what immediately strikes
me as priority.

“I doubt the body would have lasted much longer, with
the lungs and circulatory system so badly compromised,” Akinaga
estimates, trying to use reason to cover how shaken he is. “The
muscle tissue was decaying, starving. Still, it
should
have
only been viable for
hours
after circulation failed, not
days
.”

“The device may have provided some kind of
preservation,” one of the scientists guesses, also sounding
terrified.

“We will study his tissues and fluids to confirm
this,” Akinaga orders, steeling himself.

“And how long is your man Alistair likely to keep
being ‘viable’?” my father tables a darker topic.

“He stopped eating and drinking just before he
stopped responding,” Akinaga makes the grim calculations. “His body
should be weakening by now, failing. But we don’t yet understand
how this decaying corpse was maintained as long as it was, so I can
only hypothesize if the tissues are still being oxygenated. Days.
Weeks, maybe.”

The tent goes silent. I’m sure everyone is thinking
some version of what I am, doing the math of contagion: One of
these things infects multiple others before it drops. They in turn
infect even more. And so on, exponentially.

Fohat made this as a weapon, a weapon to kill
everyone who isn’t Modded. Somehow I’m sure it wasn’t his idea
alone, considering what I’ve heard about Asmodeus.

“So how do we kill one,” the Ghaddar speaks up, being
practical, “without a nanotech weapon?”

We take our group back outside, with Khan, Terina,
Negev and Cousteau following. We stand at the edge of the second
pit, looking down at poor Alistair.

“He’s still just flesh and bone,” the Ghaddar
calculates. “Shooting or stabbing won’t do if he has no need of his
vitals to keep fighting, but cutting him up…”

“Take his arms and legs,” I agree. “Or sever his
head.”

“That means getting close, which is what it wants you
to do,” my father warns.

“Severing the head would stop the body, but the head
will still be able to scan and transmit,” Straker qualifies. “And
the ‘stinger’ would still be live. If someone were careless with
the head…”

“We could blow them apart,” Rashid remembers the
tactics we’ve used against the bots.

“Costly,” my father considers our limited ordnance.
“And useless at close-quarters.”

“Frag alone won’t hurt these things much,” Straker
agrees. “You’d have to shatter them with the concussion.”

“HE penetrators might do some good damage.” Murphy
puts his hand on his revolver. “But standard ammo… Would standard
ammo do any good?”

“The device isn’t that tough,” Straker gives slightly
good news. “And it doesn’t have regenerative capabilities. A
well-placed shot could disable it.”

“But you’d have to hit it blind through the neck or
skull,” I give my concern. “It’s not a big target, even if you know
where it is.” I estimate the target by drawing a circle with my
finger just below and behind my own ear, then another about the
base of my nose.

“I’d allow you to use our fallen warrior to test, but
Akinaga wants to see how long he’ll last intact,” Khan closes a
door that we’d probably all thought about, but didn’t suggest out
of respect.

“I’d hope we don’t get further opportunities to
test,” my father says, “but I’m sure I’d be wrong.”

Akinaga’s people bring more equipment out as they
seem to need it. Their gear is fascinating. They have very little
still-operational technology, but have craftily rigged a number of
tools, including microscopes and serum separators. They soon have
an impressive field lab in their tent.

Straker steps away from the group, out in the open.
She draws her sword, holds it up in front of her face again, and
appears to meditate, perfectly still.

“Send runners to the Pax,” Khan orders Cousteau.
“Tell them what we have learned. Warn them. If they see any of
these things, they must remove the heads and destroy them, and
avoid the mouths at all cost. If any of their people are injected,
they must be mercifully destroyed.”

Cousteau gives a quick bow and runs to do her duty,
but not back to the colony. She heads for another section of the
Wall, and disappears into what could be a cave.

(Watching a Katar run is both a bizarre and elegant
sight. When Terina ran, it was graceful and loping, with long,
fluid strides. But one of their warriors in full armor adds to this
a kind of flapping motion of their laced sectional shoulder, pelvis
and thigh protectors with every stride.)

“Ensure that all of our warriors know of this and
understand the danger,” Khan then commands Negev. “Get word to our
scouting parties. If they encounter more of these, tell them to
bring them here for study
only
if they can do so safely.
Supply them with Sodegarami and Sasumata. Otherwise, destroy them
completely, behead and burn them, and report their locations and
descriptions.”

Negev also bows and moves with purpose, but for
another section of the Wall. The entire structure may be laced with
their military facilities, well-hidden. It would explain how
hundreds of warriors appeared on the Wall when we approached, but I
haven’t seen large numbers of them inside the colony proper, other
than our company of guards.

“Kah-Terina,” he summons next. His daughter steps
forward.

“Go now. Summon a meeting of the Five and their
families.”

She bows obediently, but flashes a concerned look at
me before she goes with her pair of personal guards back across the
field.

Straker is still locked in her meditative state. I
wander in her direction, but don’t want to disturb. I suddenly
realize that Khan is right by my side, towering over me.

“My daughter is quite fond of you,” he tells me with
a quiet growl. “I see the way you look at each other. I remember
being young and a slave to those inexperienced emotions. I do not
doubt your skill and bravery as a fighter, and I can imagine you
are an exotic thing to her eyes. But you are
wrong
. Stunted,
brittle-boned and oxygen dependent. And your only Value is that you
helped bring my daughter home safely. That Value is not equivalent
to my daughter.”

I have no reply in my throat. He turns and walks away
as if nothing passed between us, as if I’m inconsequential, and
goes back into the tent to supervise Akinaga’s work.

“What did he say to you?” my father, being a father,
wants to know.

“He was just thanking me for bringing Terina home to
him,” I lie badly.

The others join us in our mini-vigil. Straker soon
lowers her Blade and puts it away, turns to face us.

“I’ve informed Colonel Ram and the others of the
situation. They’ll pass the word to the the Silvers—the Forge—and
to the ETE.”

“And the Unmakers?” Murphy asks warily.

“I’ll leave that to him to decide. But I need to go.
I need to see Eureka Colony. Find out what’s happening.”

“I want to go with you,” I declare impulsively, still
simmering from Khan’s disrespect.

“Of course you would,” Murphy derides me in good
humor.

“And you?” the Ghaddar prods him in turn.

“I’m the ambassador,” he self-deprecates.

My father looks distressed, even more so than when I
volunteered myself to go chasing Erickson Carter into an army of
bots. But he also looks like he’s mulling a painful decision.

“I think I know how we’re going to earn our
Value.”

Their warriors come out in force to line their Wall,
just like they did when we arrived. Of course, this time, we’re on
the inside of it. Heading out into yet another unknown.

At least we’ll have guides—a dozen of them. Khan
insisted that a unit of his own accompany us, led by Negev and
including Cousteau. I get the impression that Cousteau volunteered
for this, and not only because she knows where they encountered the
Eureka Keeper.

Our escort of warriors turns back once to face their
colony. Standing across the field are their citizens, fronted by
their Kings, with Khan and Terina at their center. They perform a
kind of salute with their Naginata, and all those who’ve turned out
to see us off give us a bow as one.

This gives me a good look at our own people,
clustered in a group behind the Kings, a place of honor likely
given in credit for the Value we’re potentially going to earn for
us all. They look worried for us, especially my mother Sarai. She
also looks frustrated, and I can understand why: We just got here,
after crossing hundreds of kilometers filled with increasing
dangers. Now we go to face something potentially worse.

(The phrase “a fate worse than death” has a new, real
meaning to me now. I glance south, toward where Alistair still
stands staring in his pit.)

Then something weird in a strange place: In the
distance, from somewhere up around the Oculus, the air fills with
small, darting things. Despite the morning wind pushing back that
way, the things weave and dart toward us. Fast. As they get closer,
I realize they’re not that small. They’re Dragonflies—more than ten
times the size of the Earth species they were engineered from. But
these are not quite as big as the ones we’ve seen in the Green.